Sunday, December 11, 2016

Silly Season Rumors: Spanish Midfielder Linked to Sporting KC

Sporting KC didn't make any moves today in the short three hour trade window, but they've been linked with another player in Europe as the MLS offseason officially gets underway. Reports out of Spain are linking Sporting KC with Deportivo La Coruna midfielder, Alex Bergantinos.

The report states that Bergantinos has received an offer from Kansas City that the article labels "tempting and interesting" to make a move to MLS. Bergantinos has spent his entire career in Spain, the vast majority of it with Deportivo as he came up through their youth system. He's made 260 league appearances between their first team and "B" team since 2004. He's also spent time on loan three times as well. The 31 year old though has not made a single league appearance so far this season for Deportivo after the arrival of Gaizka Garitano as head coach, his only appearance is a single Copa del Rey appearance. He's still under contract until the end of the 2017/2018 Spanish season, still a year and a half away, but with his lack of playing Deportivo could be looking to let him leave even though he appears to be well liked at the club because of his having come from the youth system.

Bergantinos' position as a defensive midfielder is an interesting one for Sporting to currently be chasing with Soni Mustivar still under contract for the 2017 season and is one of the higher paid players on the roster, bringing in $200,000 according to the player union. With Bergantinos likely needing a higher salary, unless the club is looking to try to move Mustivar this move on the surface doesn't make a lot of sense. I'm not saying the move couldn't happen, but I'm just skeptical of KC using TAM/GAM or a DP slot to bring in a defensive midfielder. That said, Mustivar's level of play seemed to drop a little bit in 2016, so trying to find a replacement isn't totally surprising, although if KC is going to drop TAM/GAM/DP slot, I'd rather that they do it for a player that's going to offer more in the attack.